


Malleable Lion

by seedubs



Category: Skins (US)
Genre: F/F, We Could Have Had It All came out the same year as this show and that is fitting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-18
Updated: 2019-10-18
Packaged: 2020-12-21 12:49:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 520
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21075161
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seedubs/pseuds/seedubs
Summary: Betty is handsy.





	Malleable Lion

_how do you tame a lion? i see her when i sleep,_  
you know i liked it better when we pretended this was for, --  
i do not know what you want, i do not know what you want,  
do not know what you feel, do not know if it's --

  
  
Betty works with her fingers. She likes the feel of clay between her fingers, slick and malleable to whatever shape she commands.  
  
People are like that too, she thinks, as she hides the imprint of her fingerprints, smoothing them out of every coil. It's most obvious at school – every test, every class, every day they're being built as much as any sculpture; people are art.  
  
And the thing is, she thought she was watching Tony. Betty was sure she was watching Tony (_cherub cheeks, soft skin, lazy smile like a lion_) build his life like a house of cards, but –  
  
The thing is ... there's art.  
  
Art, the class, with Tea.  
  
Tea draws lionesses of girls with fiery manes of hair. Sometimes Betty sees the curves of Tea's lines in her sleep, and they build a curving sea of hips and lips in her dreams and -  
  
The angle of cards can't compare, she's sure of it.  
  
Betty likes to work with her hands, to dig in deep. She watches Tea, and her fingers _ache_.  
  
“Have you ever thought of trying to sculpt something?” The question slips out of her one day, in class, and it's probably the first time she's ever said anything that's gotten Tea to look at her.  
  
“No,” Tea says, with a certainty Betty's noticed she has, like Tea thinks the world is made of concrete, “Why?”  
  
“You look like you'd be good with your hands, I think.”  
  
And Tea smiles all her teeth, leaning a little closer, her pupils alive in dark eyes that move back and forth over Betty's body like the lazy swish of a cat's tail in a summer heat.  
  
“I get that a lot.”  
  
And it's a fingerprint of a moment, that gets lost in preparation for something more; it's a finger hold, not a building block, because blocks can tumble down, but this is –  
  
This is dancing, with Betty's hands massaging the perfect symmetry of curves that Tea's body is made of (_the dip of her neck from side to side, the poke of her hips slipping out of her jeans, the roll of her tongue as it bumps into Betty's teeth_) to the time of some song's beat. And Betty so desperately **wants** that she knows, that she's positive that in the haze of the club's red lights, and Tea's cloud of weed, she knows it's her mane of curls that Tea sees as set ablaze.  
  
And in the bathroom stall, against the abandoned buildings walls, on her house's hardwood floors, Betty fights Tea's fingers to show her what she feels burning so loudly in her heart  
  
“We could make something, you know,” Betty whispers into all of Tea's dips and curves, hiding the words there like a fingerprint in her clay, ready to smooth it over when Tea awakes, sobered. “Together.”

**Author's Note:**

> So back in 2011, I got invited to the MTV press screening of the new US adaptation of Skins, where I got to watch two episodes ("Everyone" and "Stanley") before they aired because I was a very hopeful, excitable fan of the project on Twitter.
> 
> I got to see, like, 30 seconds of Betty before anyone else in the fandom (who had only seen her in a trailer at that point) and ran wild with giving her a characterization before anyone else could. 
> 
> Somehow I wound up putting more effort into that then show did, but c'est la vie. 
> 
> And now I archive it here, for nostalgia's sake.


End file.
